...and four other things you should know about this week

... and four other things you need to know about this week, including a trip to the circus with Peter Blake, a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela from Idris Elba, and a twisted family drama from Denmark (do they do any other kind?)

Is Muhammad Ali the GFOAT (Greatest Father Of All Time)?
I Am Ali

Is Muhammad Ali the GFOAT (Greatest Father Of All Time)?
I Am Ali

Muhammad Ali has been many things. Heavyweight champion of the world. Conscientious objector. One hell of a talker. But he is also a father – to nine children by three of his four wives and two from extramarital affairs (it’s fair to say he certainly hasn’t been the Greatest Husband Of All Time). It’s his conversations with his kids, some of them anyway, that bookend I Am Ali, a new feature-length documentary out in cinemas on Friday by writer-director Claire Lewins, which is an affectionate, some might say hagiographic, portrait of the boxer voted “sportsman of the century” by Sports Illustrated. For reasons best known to himself, Ali taped many of his phone calls to his kids, and some of the audio recordings are played back here, complete with tiny voices repeating his “float like a butterfly” mantra back down the line. Even his son Muhammad Ali Jr appears and is eager to sing his dad’s praises, despite being at the centre of an ongoing family feud. Perhaps Ali wasn’t the perfect father, but according to those in the position to say, he gave it a darned good shot.

Sparkling missives from the sprawling metropolises:
Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid

Sparkling missives from the sprawling metropolises:
Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, has a unique perspective of modern urban life. In fact, he has three, given that he divides his time between a trio of cities: Lahore, where he mostly grew up, and later New York and London. In this collection of the non-fiction he has written since 2000 for The New York Times and the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, among others, he touches on everything from the changing reputation of Pakistan during the War on Terror to the sensual pleasures of sweating in the presence of a young woman. Hamid writes with an honesty and elegant simplicity that makes his writing both appealingly digestible and admirably direct and if you haven’t read any of his writing before, might we suggest this as a great place (or three) to start.

Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton) is out on 27 November

Is Muhammad Ali the GFOAT (Greatest Father Of All Time)?
I Am Ali

Muhammad Ali has been many things. Heavyweight champion of the world. Conscientious objector. One hell of a talker. But he is also a father – to nine children by three of his four wives and two from extramarital affairs (it’s fair to say he certainly hasn’t been the Greatest Husband Of All Time). It’s his conversations with his kids, some of them anyway, that bookend I Am Ali, a new feature-length documentary out in cinemas on Friday by writer-director Claire Lewins, which is an affectionate, some might say hagiographic, portrait of the boxer voted “sportsman of the century” by Sports Illustrated. For reasons best known to himself, Ali taped many of his phone calls to his kids, and some of the audio recordings are played back here, complete with tiny voices repeating his “float like a butterfly” mantra back down the line. Even his son Muhammad Ali Jr appears and is eager to sing his dad’s praises, despite being at the centre of an ongoing family feud. Perhaps Ali wasn’t the perfect father, but according to those in the position to say, he gave it a darned good shot.

Sparkling missives from the sprawling metropolises:
Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, has a unique perspective of modern urban life. In fact, he has three, given that he divides his time between a trio of cities: Lahore, where he mostly grew up, and later New York and London. In this collection of the non-fiction he has written since 2000 for The New York Times and the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, among others, he touches on everything from the changing reputation of Pakistan during the War on Terror to the sensual pleasures of sweating in the presence of a young woman. Hamid writes with an honesty and elegant simplicity that makes his writing both appealingly digestible and admirably direct and if you haven’t read any of his writing before, might we suggest this as a great place (or three) to start.

Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton) is out on 27 November

Best Danish family drama since Festen: The Legacy

No one does twisted family dysfunction quite like the Danes, and new drama The Legacy, which starts on Sky Arts on Wednesday, is as mixed up and messy as the best of them. Veronika (Kirsten Olesen) is a headstrong artist who’s secretly dying – we first see her having a cheeky fag outside the oncology ward – and has to decide how to divide up her wealth between her four children. The problem is that one’s having an affair with a married man, one only calls when he’s broke, one doesn't speak to her at all, and one’s been adopted and doesn’t know who her real mother is. So plenty of moral murkiness for Veronika to get her head round before she pops off, though the decision she makes halfway through episode one will have earth-shattering consequences in the nine episodes that follow.

Circus freaks make an exhibition of themselves:
Side-Show curated by Peter Blake

Circus-attending and wood-engraving aren’t two pastimes we’d normally necessarily recommend, but when they are combined in the masterful work of British artist Peter Blake, who are we to put the dampeners on anyone’s human cannonball? A new exhibition at Paul Stolper Gallery in London, curated by the artist himself, takes a closer look at “Side-Show”, the series of wood-engravings Blake did in the Seventies of a bearded lady, a giant, an obese man, a midget, and a tattooed man (in an era before one could be found in every coffee shop in the Northern hemisphere), and includes photographs and preparatory sketches alongside the works themselves. Blake will also be revealing two new etchings, one of a wrestler and the other of a tattooed girl (presumably to celebrate this era in which one can be found in every coffee shop, etc).Side-Show, Paul Stolper Gallery, London WC1, 27 November to 10 January, paulstolper.com

British actor Idris Elba’s involvement in music is longstanding: from his stint as a DJ to his rap/ragga career, he’s tried his hand at numerous aspects of the biz, but this latest might be his most intriguing. mi Mandela, out today, sees Elba curate, write and produce an album of tracks inspired by his time filming 2013 Nelson Mandela biopic Mandela (and also by his late father, Winston), which features a range of South African talent (the Mahotella Queens, Phuzekhemisi) in collaboration with Western acts (Mumford and Sons, James Blake). Some of the results are decidedly curious – on the title track Elba sings/raps directly about preparing to play the legendary statesman, “the whole time wondering how Mandela could be played by Stringer Bell” – but there are some lovely touches too: Audra Mae and Cody Chestnutt on the heartfelt duet “Tree”, and the yearning ballad “Home”, written by Mumford and Sons and sung by Thandiswa Mazwai and Maverick Sabre.

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